The textile industry during the past decade has, as a whole, made important technological advances in the chemical finishing of textile fabrics. Numerous processes have been developed for imparting minimum care characteristics to garments and articles prepared from specially treated textile fabrics. Exemplary of such advances are the wash and wear fabrics, hereinafter referred to as precured fabrics, and the durable press fabrics, hereinafter referred to as post cured fabrics. These characteristics generally have been imparted to textile fabrics by the application of resinous materials. The resinous materials are applied to the fabric and are later crosslinked to the fabric by the action of a suitable catalyst. Depending upon the time at which the crosslinking reaction occurs, either a wash and wear fabric or a durable press fabric is produced. The precured fabrics are those for which the crosslinking reaction has occurred prior to transformation of the fabric into a garment or other article of commerce. Post cured fabrics are those fabrics which are subjected to the crosslinking reaction subsequent to the transformation of the fabric into a garment or other article of commerce.
The precured and post cured fabrics, by way of fiber content, may contain any of a number of natural or synthetic materials. Presently, however, the majority of these fabrics include synthetic, man-made fibers. These synthetic fibers offer tremendous advantages to the fabrics as opposed to fabrics containing only the natural materials. One drawback, however, is the fact that the synthetic fibers have a propensity to soiling and as such, the garment during normal wear may come into contact with oily type materials which are accepted due to the oleophilicity of the synthetic fibers. These oily type materials, however, are very hard to remove due to the hydrophobic properties of the synthetic fibers. Accordingly, once the garment comes into contact with these stain-producing materials, it cannot be cleaned by wash and wear laundering procedures, but must be dry cleaned to successfully remove the stains from the garment. Furthermore, even in the absence of the stain-producing material, repeated washing of a garment including synthetic fibers causes the garment to assume a dingy gray color due to soil that is picked up in the wash water. Such soil pickup is referred to as "soil redeposition."
The soiling problem previously mentioned brought about a still further technological innovation in the textile industry--a wash and wear or durable press fabric having soil release characteristics. The term "soil release" does not infer soil resistance, but only the characteristic that once a fabric is soiled, it may then be successfully cleaned via the normal wash cycle. Furthermore, the fabrics, and/or garments that are treated to have soil release characteristics also have the characteristic of not taking up soil from the wash water, i.e., soil in the wash water will not be redeposited onto the garment being washed.
Paralleling the development of durable press and wash and wear fabrics has been the work in imparting oil and water repellency to fabrics. Numerous means have been developed for imparting water repellency to fabrics including the following types of water repellent substances; (1) wax emulsions; (2) water repellents based on pyridinium compounds, long chain fatty amides, resin-wax mixtures; (3) silicones; (4) organo-chromium compounds; and (5) fluorochemicals.
The fluorochemical type water repellents are probably the most commonly used water repellent today. Two commercially available fluorochemical compositions are FC-208, the fluorocarbon ingredient of Scotchgard treated fabrics, sold by Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company and Zepel, a water repellent fluorochemical sold by E. I. du Pont de Nemours & Co. A certain degree of oil repellency is generally achieved with the water repellency imparted to the fabrics treated with the fluorocarbons.
One drawback of water and oil repellent fabrics is the difficulty in removing stains by laundering. The water and oil repellency characteristics, of course, render a fabric both hydrophobic and oleophobic and presumably resistant to any water or oil. Under normal circumstances, this resistance provides a degree of protection from soiling. However, when oil, for instance, is forced into the fabric by rubbing and/or pressure, it cannot be removed by laundering due to the fact that the fabric is hydrophobic and will not accept water that is necessary for removal of the oil. For example, while rainwear garments repel falling rain, etc., in use these garments are stained with oils from the body of the wearer particularly at the collar and the cuffs. These stains may be partially removed during dry cleaning, but the dry cleaning process adversely affects the water repellency characteristic of the garment. On the other hand, these oil stains will not be removed in normal laundering.
Heretofore, it was not considered possible for a fabric to have oil and water repellency and also soil release characteristics. This was because the oil and water repellency were believed to be achieved due to hydrophobicity and oleophobicity of the fibers making up the fabric or treatments increasing the hydrophobicity and oleophobicity. On the other hand, soil release was considered to be achieved with fibers which were hydrophilic in nature or by treatments to increase the hydrophobicity of the fibers. Thus, oil and water repellency were considered to be directly opposite to the characteristics required for soil release.
An object of the present invention is to provide textile material with the heretofore unattainable combination of soil and water repellency characteristics together with soil release characteristics.
A further object of the invention is to provide a fabric including synthetic polymeric fibers which has soil and water repellency and soil release characteristics.
Another object of the invention is to provide a fabric from which stains can be removed by laundering without destroying the water and oil repellency characteristics of the fabric.
An additional object of the invention is to provide a fabric including synthetic polymeric fibers which not only has the combination of water and oil repellency and soil release characteristics but also possesses durable press and/or wash and wear characteristics.